Cycle counting programme: Hamilton

John, Axel and Jeanette have developed an automatic cycle counting programme for Hamilton City Council (HCC). The project identifies approximate site locations, counter types, time frames and indicative costs.

Based on previous work including the NZTA automatic cycle counters trial and the Christchurch City Council cycle counting programme, we developed recommendations for Hamilton City Council including considerations of:

• strategic site criteria required to obtain a representative sample;
• the types of equipment available (including new technologies introduced since our earlier work) and their abilities, limitations and requirements; and
• possible combinations of equipment and counting methods to develop a system best suited to Hamilton City.

The recommended programme includes two permanent count sites plus 10 "short-term" sites which would be monitored for 2-week periods each year. These sites are a mix of on and off-road, school and commuter, central city and suburban locations.  The sites require automatic (i.e. machine, not manual) counting equipment; we recommended ZELT inductive loop technology for a variety of reasons including its ability to count on- and off-road, its accuracy (especially in mixed traffic situations) and its inconspicuous nature.

We also investigated the cost implications of our recommended programme and explored ways of staging this if constrained by budget.

We expect this programme will deliver Hamilton City with comprehensive and cost-effective data that will be invaluable in planning and providing for cycling.

Further work is required to specify exact site locations and installation details for contractors. Subsequent work would involve monitoring and analysis of data obtained through the counting programme.